After a four-week trial, jurors found fallen crypto-currency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of seven charges of fraud, conspiracy, and money-laundering. Debating the former billionaire’s future over pizza, their deliberation lasted about as long as the running time of a late-period Martin Scorsese film.
They had plenty of evidence to work with: internal communications, documents, and, perhaps most incriminating of all, Bankman-Fried’s own words. Over and over, prosecutors argued that his public statements differed sharply from how he actually ran his companies. Promising customers and lenders and investors one thing in public and doing the opposite in private is fraud. And Bankman-Fried made a lot of promises.
